a thirty day countdown to    what exactly?
by Janyne
Summary: Two people notice each other in their dreams and after a while realise the other is as real as they are! But even after trying, they can't seem to work out who the other is irl. Will they ever gain the power to guide their dreams in the right direction?


"_Where_ is my mug, though? Mom! Honestly!" a girl frantically yelled, her voice echoing off the packed walls of books of the small home she resided in. She'd just turned twenty, still lived with her mom because she couldn't find a place of her own and was fairly attached to 'her' things. Including the mug she always drank chocolate milk from. Always. Every single morning.

"Well, I brought it to you last... Uh..." a soft voice could be heard from somewhere amongst the stacks of boxes in her mom's room. Her mom loved selling secondhand stuff and... It'd gotten out of hand. There wasn't a single bit of free wall, anywhere. She did anything for her daughter, something that just happens if you raise a daughter alone, she'd figured and just thought it was all right. This also meant the girl had been raised to be spoiled- With attention, though, not material things, she didn't care for them... ...Well, except those few things that really did matter to her.

"Oh come on. You have to remember where you left it!" the girl's voice squealed. The other voice replied something illegible and the girl stepped over some boxes to reach her mom's room. "What'd you say?" the girl asked and a flustered head popped up between the boxes. "Gah. I just can't find this book and I already sold it! It's _always_ in the last box. Stupid, stupid books."

"Then burn them. It's not that hard. But, where's my mug!" the girl continued, whining slightly at the prospect of never seeing the mug again and having lost it in the chaos their tiny home was. "Baby, sweetheart, I don't know. Check with the neighbours, maybe?" her mom said and without saying anything else, the head disappeared back into the mess and the sound of shifting books indicated the conversation was done there. Her mom didn't know and didn't care. It was just a mug, after all.

_...With the neighbours? Wait, what?_ the girl thought, raising an eyebrow and wondering why on earth her mug would be with the neighbours. Before she knew it, she found herself walking down the flight of stairs and outside, walking past the neighbour's door and to the bridge nearby. Without thinking, she walked straight into an office and glanced about.

_What? W- Wait, what am I doing here?_ her thoughts couldn't keep up with the change of sceneries anymore. Why was there an office near the bridge? They lived in a suburb, nowhere near the industrial areas or any place with offices. There'd never been an office there, either and she actually cycled past that area daily so it couldn't have been built when she wasn't looking. Plus, she'd been told to check with the neighbours, so why was she even here?

Her feet carried her to the desk, where she asked the young lady behind the desk if she perhaps knew where her mug was. The young lady shrugged, muting her headphones for a minute, "I'm sorry, I wouldn't know, but perhaps check the shelves behind me? All our clean mugs are there, perhaps your mom mistakenly placed it there?" she said, completely oblivious to the fact a girl had just walked into their office without an appointment, asking for a /mug/ of all things.

_This doesn't make any sense at all! Why would she know anything about my mug? And, why would she know my mom misplaced it? What on earth is going on?_ she thought, walking around the corner and checking the shelves, fingers trailing over the rims of the wooden planks in the hopes of ...There it was! Blue on the inside, a Hunchback of the Notre Dame scene from the Disney movie plastered over the outside, only leaving a minimal amount of space for the slightly cracked white handle.

"I honestly don't know what this is doing here..." she said, picking it up and staring at it. A sound next to her ear made her look away from her mug, spotting a fully outfitted astronaut in the door opening. She blinked a few times and noticed the person in the astronaut outfit did the same. _Whoa, he's handsome._ she thought and with that thought, she woke up.

xxx

A young guy, seemingly in his early twenties, paced around a large, rectangular room, filled with sofas and small round tables that didn't match the sofas in any way- The atmosphere tense, the lack of people definitely not improving his mood in any way. He was expecting people, that could easily be seen from the expression on his face and... The visitors weren't welcome guests, that was obvious, too.

A knock on the door, though expected, startled him and stopped him in his tracks for a moment before heading towards it to open. With a sour look on his face, he pulled the door open and faked a smile for the people entering. He ignored them completely and shook his head, these were the people he detested most and he'd gotten stuck with _them_ as lab partners. What a nightmare, it couldn't have been worse.

They took their seats and he realised he had no idea why they'd even agreed to meet there- Or if they even had, he couldn't really remember. He sighed as he shut the door behind them and pushed himself to go over to them and sit there. The awkward silence lasted for a few very long seconds and he couldn't help but stare out the window and wish to be anywhere but there.

He longed for a good meal, too, he hadn't been able to eat all day because of his nerves. These people annoyed him so much it was unbearable, the two girls were incredibly annoying- He couldn't really say which was worse and the guy just... Followed them around and didn't say a word. All they did was giggle in all classes they shared and the guy would just sheepishly laugh and do their assignments for them because he liked their attention and the way they looked.

Typical.

But, he was stuck with it and the oh-so-attractive grassy green hill that was visible from the windows wasn't somewhere he'd be any time soon. Or so he thought. One of the girls stood up and before he could realise what was happening -apparently he hadn't noticed she was drunk...?- she stumbled over to one of the windows, knocking on it.

"Whuh? Why ain' he lettin' us in...?" she mumbled, knocking hard, slamming the window. It didn't give way, so she bashed into it and it crashed, glass shattering everywhere and... ...She'd fallen through? His eyes widened in horror, they were multiple floors up, she'd get hurt incredibly badly, or worse- She might have died! In shock, he stood up and hurried to the window, holding the window pane firmly so he wouldn't fall out himself.

He looked down, but there was no sign of her. In fact, there was no sign of anything resembling ground, it just seemed to be a big black hole. He didn't understand a thing of what was happening anymore, but the hole seemed to pull and tug at him- Harder, _harder_, **harder**. Before he knew, he got sucked outside as his surroundings turned black.

The moment he could force his eyes open again, he found himself on the grassy hill and a familiar figure was smiling at him. What had happened? Where was he? Well, he knew where he was, but how had he gotten there? And why did this person seem so familiar though he was sure he'd never met the person?

And, where were the others? They couldn't just have vanished into thin air... Like the room had. He blinked and rubbed the bridge of his nose, brushing past his eyes to make sure it was all real. ...It was still there. He was still on the hill, and the familiar figure began to take shape. A man in his fifties with a small white beard and neatly kept white hair, wearing a red apron.

The figure offered him a golf club which he, by automatism, accepted and stared at in amazement. _Golf?_ he thought, more confused than ever. The man offered him a hand to get up and when he did, led him to the first hole. Instead of a regular hole, however, there was a massive KFC bucket standing ready to have their golf balls hit a hole in one. He blinked in recognition, looking back at the man, flashing an involuntary smile at him. He shrugged it off and gave a big swing with the club, knocking a ball off a tee, landing it flat in the middle of the bucket.

He walked after it to get the ball out, but when he glanced over the rim of the bucket, he saw the black hole again and before he knew it, he'd been sucked in again. When he managed to open his eyes again, he found himself walking through a town that seemed vaguely familiar to him, though he couldn't place it. He'd been there before, he instinctively knew, but what for? His mind couldn't work it out.

He entered the first building he saw, raised a hand at the receptionist and ...his eyes met the most strange girl he'd ever seen. She was wearing black pyjama trousers, though the rest of her seemed to have already been prepared to go out- She looked incredibly flustered and she was staring at a mug. A mug? Why on earth, they were in an office and she was staring at a mug, smiling gleefully, as if it'd been the only thing that had made her life worthwhile.

He looked down and noticed he was wearing an astronaut suit. Before he could pinch himself, he blinked and woke up.

xxx

_These dreams really shouldn't get any weirder._ Sapphire thought. They just didn't make sense in any sort of way. Why, for crying out loud, would she lose her mug and find it in some office she'd never seen before? And what was that astronaut doing there? She shifted within her sheets, hands moving up to rub her temples and from there move to her eyes to remove the sleeping sand that'd crept in through the night. Dreams haunted her every single night, at least three a night, of which one usually was a nightmare. She always remembered at least a single one of them and she could only hope it wasn't the nightmare- Though it frequently was.

She sat up and lifted her legs from the bed, standing up slowly to avoid dizziness, then shoved down her pyjama trousers. She liked sleeping in pyjamas, though in summer it was frequently too hot to wear anything at all. She prefered the winter. She couldn't help it, but the cold wasn't bad enough to keep her from loving the snow, the hot chocolate and the drowsy hours in the morning when all you want it stay in bed, cuddling up against your pillows and smile when you realise you can turn over and fall asleep again.

She smiled to herself, discarding the thought. It wasn't winter yet, though it would only be a few more months. She'd been looking forward to it, the colours (whites, grays, purples, some dark browns and blacks), the scarves to fill in the lack of happy colours, the snow and ruining it... Oh well.

A different thought pressed her mind now; Who'd that guy been? Her dreams might never make sense, but she always recognised the faces one way or another. She'd also read you couldn't make up faces in your dreams, so she had to have seen him before... Somewhere. But she couldn't even slightly recall having met anyone like him. She shrugged the thought off, knowing she had to get ready for university.

She dreaded going there, especially in the mornings- Not because of the classes, she usually enjoyed them, but... The traveling time took the best of her, the swaying train practically rocking her back to sleep, especially when she had to get to university early in the morning, the smell of wet clothes on the buses not making the experience any better either. All in all, it was only about an hour to get there (and back), but it was an hour of wasted time a day in her opinion. If she could move, she would, but so far she hadn't had the luck to find a decent apartment that satisfied her needs.

So, instead, day after day, she carried herself from her bed to university and back. Eating was something she did somewhere in between, though even that was frequently skipped. There were more urgent matters at hand- Sleep was only delayed by deadlines and when she did sleep, she didn't actually rest, which left her exhausted at all times.

She shrugged it off, finished getting dressed, narrated the story to her mom who'd just raised her eyebrows and laughed at the continuous reference to mugs and after that, left for another boring day of lectures at university.


End file.
